Folding@Home is a downloadable online application for the Playstation 3 (and PC - but I'll be focusing on the console version) that was created by Stanford University in 2007.
The program studies the changing shapes (ie. folding) proteins make for different functions ( ex. one can become an antibody to fight disease, but another can fold and become hair, or skin). If proteins don't fold correctly, the result can be any number of diseases, such as, Alzheimer's, Mad Cow, Parkinson's disease, and cancers.
What makes the application so interesting, is its technological innovations. While using the program online, the Playstation begins to work in sync with the hundreds of thousands of other systems around the globe that are running the program at the same time, giving an incredible amount of computing power to simulate the folds in proteins. Stanford states that thanks to this increase in processes, previous studies that would have taken years to even simulate can now be completed from within a few weeks to a couple of months.
The console version is also a social activity as well, allowing you to join teams of others online, and having a scoreboard to see the top contributors. The program also contains a map allowing you to see all of the other systems that are folding, an news program to catch up on headlines, and local / international weather.
The program is free to download, and can be a source for news and weather reports. It is available for Playstation 3 owners, as well as computer users. Users can contribute to these studies and eradicate diseases just by leaving their systems or computers idle ( using a computer just to listen to iTunes, why not help towards a cause?). Innovative in that instead of a University or Lab spending an incredible amount of money on a new supercomputer or technology - why not use the processing power that is already widely available?
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